


Episode VIII: Return of the Questionable Training Method

by thatstheone



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crack, Gen, I should be ashamed of this probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatstheone/pseuds/thatstheone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The first day, Luke tells her to stand very still. Then he tries to climb up her back.</i><br/>  <i>He gets a black eye, three bruises, and an attempted lightsaber burn before he explains the concept of a carry test well enough for her to relent.</i></p><p>Or, the detail of Rey's Jedi schooling EVERYONE wants to see, before and/or since Hamill dropped that birthday photo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Episode VIII: Return of the Questionable Training Method

The first day, Luke tells her to stand very still. Then he tries to climb up her back.

 

He gets a black eye, three bruises, and an attempted lightsaber burn before he explains the concept of a carry test well enough for her to relent. She gets dishes duty for the foreseeable future (“and _not_ in the Jedi sense of the phrase, Rey”).

 

*

 

The second day, she lets him on. The weight of him is not as much of a problem as she would've expected. Evidently all the extra food and dexterity training since she left Jakku has made her even stronger than before, full with ropelike muscles where she was once wiry and too close to bone.

 

Then he tells her to start running.

 

*

 

The third day, she makes it down the steps to the shore, drops him, and swears in every language she knows (six, not counting a couple snatches of droid code, seven if you count what she'd managed to pick up from Chewbacca). “Anger,” he says, traitorously peaceful for having been dumped on the wet ground.

 

“—is a path to the _Dark Side_ , I _know_.”

 

And she stomps off to skip rocks with the Force. After a moment, he joins her.

 

*

 

The fourth day he doesn't ask. She knows better than to let her guard down.

(She was right. After the fifth day he wakes her up before dawn to run a carry test _in the rain_.)

 

*

 

The seventh day, she tries mutiny. “ _Why_ am I _doing this_ ,” she grits out, hurtling over a tree that was downed in yesterday's storm. Where everything had been puddles before, now it is grainy, sucking mud, just dry enough to try and trap her feet each time she plants them.

 

“It's as my Master—well, one of them—”

“ _Taught you_?! What in the sandblasted hells is the _point_ of this tradition? I _know_ how to carry loads!”

“You aren't focused on the moment, Rey,” Luke replies, and that's when she trips and goes sprawling.

He lands perfectly, she skins both knees, he pulls a roll of bandage right out from one of his billowing sleeves. (Apparently, he'd taped it to his bicep.)

 

They troop back to camp.

 

“Why can't you just tell me where to go using the Force? I know it's....” Possible. A flash of memory: _you know I can take whatever I want._

 

She shuts up. It's different, almost as different as Luke's presence compared to his, but.

 

“This is more direct,” Luke says, filling the silence, each word mercifully mundane. “And there's more to lose if you drop your passenger than if you simply take a spill yourself.”

 

*

 

Naturally, she doesn't give up, not when the concept still irks her.

“I could be meditating!” A stagger. “I could be _doing chores_!” She adjusts her stride, but moreso her breathing. The words coming out of her mouth spend a lot of extra air, but they are right, they are _righteously indignant_ , and she is not giving them up. “I could be learning _better lightsaber forms_!”

 

“We've already started those things, you know,” he replies, his voice more groan than reassurance. “And you're managing them all with aplomb so far.”

 

“Then _why am I doing_ _ **this**_ _?_ ” As if yelling weren't enough, she glares over her shoulder.

 

“Like I said before—BOULDER!”

 

She twists like it's nothing, skids by it, sees it loom massive in the Force whole seconds before she sees it with her eyes. Then she stops. Neither of them have been more than briefly jarred. “...was that already there? Did you _put that there_ to illustrate your point?”

 

“The Force moves in mysterious ways,” Luke intones, and she resists the urge to smack him as he eases himself to the ground. Victory, victory, victory.

 

*

 

(Luke ends the carry test much earlier than Yoda ever ended his. The constant, awkward-angled bouncing makes his bones ache, and he supposes that's what he gets for going into this as he had: simply wanting to know, finally, at long last, the satisfaction that ancient green menace must have known, sitting on Luke's shoulders like a king. He'd forgotten to account for the size difference.)

 

 

 


End file.
